The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

In the stories, music is a frequently occurring motif. In “The Sojourner,” music explores the nature of memory and love. John Ferris’s ex-wife, Elizabeth, plays for him music from his past, and the experience forces him to reflect on the love he once experienced with her and the lack of this kind of connection in his life at present. The music’s emotional associations are long-lasting: “it spoke to him of another time, another place—it was the music Elizabeth used to play. The delicate air summoned a wilderness of memory. Ferris was lost in […] past longings, conflicts, ambivalent desires” (122). Ferris is in an emotionally vulnerable position, having just buried his father; the memories dredged up by the “delicate air” make him realize how much he wants to feel love and support again before his death. In response, Ferris decides to commit to his new partner, Jeannine, and her son, Valentin. In “Wunderkind,” music both connects Frances to her devoted and loving piano teacher and shapes her identity in an unhealthy and ultimately constricting way. Defining herself as a piano prodigy transforms the music into something mechanical and devoid of emotion; concerned with external validation from observers like the ones who praise the young Heime and from Mr. Bilderbach, Frances loses the self-confidence that leads to good performance. Finally, in “Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland,” music is a backdrop in the lives of Mr. Brook and Madame Zilensky—it is work that they perform as professors, and no longer inspires the kind of emotional connection that Ferris experiences. Instead of reaching to music to enrich her otherwise narrow experience of life, Madame Zilensky turns to inventing far-fetched stories about her past to connect to others.